


Boldly Going

by The_Buzz



Series: Advent Calendar [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - where Supernatural and Star Trek are both book series, And some things they don't, Angst, Case Fic, Dean and Kirk find they have a lot in common, Demons, First Kiss, Forced to torture each other, Forgiveness, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Dean, Hurt Spock, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not quite in that order, Plot, Plot Twists, Romance, Season 11, Slow Burn, The Winchester Gospel, Time Travel, Torture, Violence, Winchesters' POV, hurt cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-14 15:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5748841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Buzz/pseuds/The_Buzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters and Cas investigate some demonic omens in Riverside, Iowa, and find that two demons have been killing people with the last name of "Kirk." But why? And who are the two strange men who seem to be following the same trail? They'll find the answers to those questions, and more, when the demons responsible capture them all... but will they get out alive?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completed story, written for the prompt: A Star Trek/Supernatural crossover, any way you like.
> 
> As it turns out, I like a lot of hurt/comfort, friendship, Destiel, and plot. It starts out very Winchester-centric but won't stay that way.
> 
> I'll be posting a new chapter every day or two. Enjoy!

It was pretty standard, as hunts went. They’d gotten reports of a demonic omens surrounding the little town of Riverside, Iowa, and had packed into the Impala to go check it out. Even Cas was with them, roused from his Netflix-induced stupor by the promise of a road trip and some uncomplicated demon-smiting. Dean was in a better mood than he’d been in in weeks. No major emergencies (aside from the Darkness, which had been a background major emergency for so long it barely registered), Sam beside him, Cas in the back, and the open road stretching ahead. He belted out every song that came on the radio, even the cheesy ones, if only to make Sam stare at him in unabashed horror.

“—I’d crawl upon the floor! Come _crashing_ through the do-or! Baby I can’t—“

“Dean.”

“—this feeling anyMOOORE—“

Sam’s disapproving face had gone about three notches more disapproving. “Dean, I’m picking something up.”

Dean stopped singing immediately, and turned the radio volume down. In the rearview mirror, he could see Cas’s expression shift from one of perplexed….longing? (no, couldn’t be) to one of concern. “What?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Sam said. He had rigged up some sort of portable demon detector from an iPad and some old equipment at the bunker, and was staring into it as he fiddled with the knobs. “I don’t think it’s another demon. But there’s something weird here. Like a, a disturbance. Elecromagnetic weirdness. Strange air currents.”

“Let me see,” Cas said, reaching up to the front seat so Sam could hand him the gadget. He peered at it for a few moments, then said, “It’s weak, as if it happened some time ago. But I think I know what this is.”

Dean and Sam waited, but when Cas’s dramatic beat turned into several long seconds in which he started examining the reading again, Dean cleared his throat. “And what is it?”

Cas looked up, mildly startled, then answered. “These are the same kinds of phenomena that one sees when a temporal rift is created in the fabric of the universe. Dean. Someone has been traveling in _time_.”

They all processed the information for a beat.

“Angels?” Sam asked.

“Another one of those time god dudes?” Dean guessed.

Cas shook his head.

“What, then?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know,” Cas said. “Whatever this is…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

-

They arrived Riverside about an hour later. The readings had intensified as they’d approached, though Cas claimed he could still make neither heads nor tails of it. As he pulled in to the main street, Dean honked at two guys, one of whom was wearing an absurd hat that could really only be described as a Gilligan’s Island hat, who nearly walked into the side of the Impala while strolling in the middle of the road, then pulled over to the side. The plan was to ignore the weird temporal readings for the moment and treat this like any case. Talk to the locals, look for sulfur, do a little stabbing and smiting. It was possible, after all, that the wacky readings were just a coincidence. Or that Sam’s jerry-rigged doodad had crapped out.

It was good to be on a case.

A kid working at the gas station said that he didn’t know of anything super unusual, except that apparently two guys in weird-ass outfits had robbed a store down the block, killing the proprietor. “Weird-ass,” in this case, turned out to mean bright yellow shirts with little designs on them, along with knee-high heeled boots. With that info, they made their way to the local police station, flashed their FBI badges, and learned that despite the two clowns having been caught on camera, no one had any idea who they were. Nor had they actually robbed the place—they’d just gone in, killed the store’s owner, a woman by the name of Jessica Kirk, whose only remaining family was a brother who lived on a farm about an hour outside of town.

They went to talk to the brother but found him unavailable, at least according to his wife. He’d been out of town on business and was hurrying back to see to his sister’s arrangements, the poor thing. They told the wife to call them as soon as he showed up.

By then, night was falling, and they booked two rooms in the Star Gaz-R motel just outside of town. (Cas insisted that he would be fine sleeping on the floor or anywhere else in a single room, and that Dean shouldn’t spend his money on a whole other room for him. Dean had told him not to be stupid and booked another room.)

Now, they were at the local bar, finishing up greasy bar food dinners and having a couple of drinks. They’d squeezed into a small booth. Sam, being a sasquatch, had one side to himself, while Dean and Cas were rubbing elbows on the other side. Behind Sam, Dean could see the pair of men he’d nearly run over earlier in the day. The tall one, whose severe, angular face in no way matched his jaunty Gilligan hat, was deep in conversation with his companion, a shorter blonde man, but their voices were low enough that Dean couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Dean, Sam, and Cas sipped their beers contemplatively for a few minutes.

 “You think the farmer was really out of town?” Dean said. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence.”

Sam tilted his head, considering. “I mean, he could have been on a business trip. Like, a tractor expo or something? Cas said the wife wasn’t a demon. So if she was lying she was doing it on her own.”

Cas didn’t have his full powers back yet after Rowena’s attack dog spell, but he had been pretty sure about that.

“Guys in yellow might’ve been possessed,” Dean said. Their eyes hadn’t been black on the surveillance video, but not _every_ demon conveniently turned and blinked black for the camera. “Maybe she knew something. She sure as hell didn’t seem too concerned about the situation.”

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “Perhaps she or her husband are connected to the killers in some way.”

“Or she wanted him and his family gone and the demons took care of it,” Sam said. “I’ll check the records and see if they’ve got any inheritance coming, or anything like that.”

“Might be worth staking out the place,” Dean said, thinking aloud. “Who knows. Maybe the dudes who ganked Kirk—” Dean stopped suddenly when the man sitting in the booth on the other side of the divider started and twisted to look at him. The man turned back quickly, but Dean had lost his train of thought anyway. “...Me and Cas can do the stakeout tonight, if you want to get started on the research, Sammy,” he finished in a lower voice. “There’s definitely something doesn’t add up here.”

“Fine with me,” Sam said, giving Dean and Cas a little smirk like he thought something was funny. Dean squinted at him. “Just, ah, drop me off at the motel first, will you?”

As they left the booth, Dean overheard a snatch of conversation coming from the pair in the other booth—they were trying, apparently, to figure out what the numbers scrawled on the check meant, and how they were supposed to use money to pay for them. The last he heard was the tall Hat Guy saying, in a deep, serious baritone, “ _Fascinating._ ”

-

“Nothin’ like a stakeout, huh?” Dean said to Cas.

The Impala was parked along the road leading up to the old farmhouse, just nestled enough in a patch of overgrown bushes that it wouldn’t be directly visible from the house.

Cas considered. “I suppose not. Although. Humans do sometimes sit in parked cars and watch for other phenomena, don’t they? I imagine birdwatching might be like a stakeout, for example.”

Dean smirked and gave him the side-eye, not sure if Cas was yanking his chain. “Uh, yeah. I guess.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Dean stared out the window, and wished the maybe-demons in yellow would just get a move on already.

“Dean…” Cas said eventually, sounding (for a guy who seemed to have no problem blurting out just about anything else) unusually hesitant.

“Hm?” Dean said, glancing over at him.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” Cas said awkwardly, the words coming out too fast. “For…taking me back in. Into the bunker, that is. And for bringing me along with you. I’ve already thanked Sam, but I know that for you, it must be different. Because of what I did.”

Dean’s eyebrows drew together. He certainly remembered Cas’s turn as Rowena’s attack dog, but after what he’d done to Cas under the influence of the mark, it hardly seemed worth mentioning. “Uh. It’s no problem. You know. You’re always welcome in the bunker.”

“Am I?” Cas sounded sad, and Dean wished he could see him better than the dim light filtering into the car allowed. “I don’t do very much. I haven’t been able to help you like I used to.”

“So?” Dean said, getting increasingly confused about where this was going. “You were sick. Who said you need to do stuff?”

Cas closed his eyes, and his voice came out strained. “Dean, ever since… ever since Rowena… I’ve had trouble. I keep remembering the things I did to you. Seeing them again. When I don’t want to.”

“So?” Dean said again. “That’s normal. Not saying it doesn’t suck, but…” he shrugged.

“It’s not normal for an angel,” Cas said.  Now that he’d begun talking he seemed desperate for Dean to understand something. “I’ve been thinking. Trying to understand why I should be having such vivid memories of this unbidden. This isn’t the first time I’ve hurt people, Dean, or even hurt you.”

“And?” Dean said.

Cas took a deep breath. “Dean, you have to understand, I’ve never felt this way before. Or rather, I did, but it was new and I didn’t understand. This time, I hurt you even though I—I—” but whatever Cas was going to confess, it wasn’t the time. Out of nowhere, a van making the most horrible grinding noises Dean had ever heard coming out of an engine flew by them on the road and screeched and jerked to a stop right in front of the farmhouse.

It was—and Dean was almost done with even being surprised—the men they’d seen on the street and at the bar. The blonde one had been driving, and the tall one (who had lost the ridiculous hat) staggered out of the passenger’s seat looking decidedly woozy.

“Come on,” Dean said, shouldering his door open and grabbing his handgun. The men apparently hadn’t noticed the Impala and were walking slowly up to the farmhouse. They had some sort of Taser-looking weapons.

Cas opened his own door, which scraped along the bushes Dean had parked in, and got out as well. Dean had given him a gun but he could see Cas’s eyes glowing slightly, as if he were gathering his smiting power. Well, that was fine with Dean. He motioned for Cas to follow him up toward the house, keeping to the shadows of the bushes and the line of the house. The two men didn’t seem to notice them, intent on approaching the house.

As soon as he got close enough, he grabbed the blonde guy and spun him around, pinning him against the side of the house with one forearm, pointing the gun at him with the other hand. Cas grabbed the tall guy and pinioned him similarly.

“Who the hell are you?” Dean snapped at the blonde guy. “Are you following us?”

The blonde guy, who was several inches shorter than him, glared up at him. “No. We’re not. We’re looking for our friends.”

“Your friends?” Dean echoed, looking between them.

The he stopped, and stared, for the tall guy had unmistakably pointed ears. Cas had apparently noticed already, for he had been already looking at them with interest.

“All right,” Dean growled, shoving the blonde guy against the wall again. “What are you two?”

“I’m human,” the Blonde Guy said.

“All right, smart guy,” Dean said. “What is he?”

“Dean,” Cas said urgently.

“What?” Dean snapped.

“Demons. Nearby. I sense them.”

“Him?” Dean asked, nodding at the guy with the ears.

“No,” Cas said, craning his head around to sense them. Dean did the same.

As soon as Dean and Cas’s attention were off of the strange pair, however, they sprung into motion. The short guy kneed Dean in the gut, while Dean doubled over gasping, pulled out his Taser thing and jabbed it against Dean’s shoulder. The energy from it knocked him sideways and he landed on his ass, gun flying out of his hand, his vision swimming in and out. At the same time the tall guy pulled an arm free from Cas’s grip with surprising strength and deliver a pinch to his shoulder. When Cas looked at his hand, confusion plain on his face, the man’s eyes widened imperceptibly. Cas grabbed his hand, twisting it around with an audible crack and throwing the guy against the house, face-first this time.

“Spock!” the blonde guy yelled, then changed a setting and shot Cas with his Taser-thing. A bright line of light shot out from it, energy radiating out where it hit Cas in the side and tossed him backward. Cas hit the ground hard, a smoking hole in his trench coat, and lay still. Dean watched the whole thing as if from underwater, the sights and sounds oddly muted. His whole body stung and he couldn’t think clearly.  

“Spock, are you hurt?” the blonde guy was asking.

“Fine, Captain,” the tall guy said, cradling one hand.

But whatever they might have done next was interrupted by the arrival of yet two more familiar faces: the two men from the surveillance video who had killed Jessica Kirk. Both were short, and both wore the same yellow shirt-black pants and boots combos that they’d been wearing in the video. One had a bowl haircut like a Beatles cover band reject and the other was a compact Asian man with a decided swagger. Both were smiling as they walked toward Dean, Cas, and the two strange guys.

Both of their eyes were black.

Swagger raised a hand, and both the blonde guy and the tall guy went flying up against the side of the farm house, where they stuck as if held by Velcro. He raised the other hand, an oddly theatrical gesture, and both Dean and Cas were picked up from the ground by an unseen force and tossed into side of the house beside them.

“Vell, vell, vell,” the said Bowl Cut, as Dean struggled to keep his head up. Beside him, Cas’s eyes were clenched as though he were in terrible pain, and his side was still smoking where the bolt of energy had hit it. Both demons were grinning, and Bowl cut took several steps closer. “Vhat have ve here?”


	2. Chapter 2

One minute, Dean was pressed against the side of the old farmhouse by two black-eyed weirdos in yellow shirts, woozy from the stun gun blast. The next, he was waking up with a pounding headache and his wrists tied to a post behind him, his last memory being of an unseen force slamming his head back against the stone house. The others were tied up too, to a row of beams that seemed to be supporting the ceiling of—what? A cellar? It was certainly damp and chilly enough, and bags of what looked like turnips (or something; Dean was a little unclear on what turnips actually looked like) lined the walls. The only light came from a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling. He tried immediately to pull his way free of the ropes, but all that did was strain his shoulders.

Beside him, Cas was still unconscious, his head hanging. Dean felt a jolt of very real worry—it took a lot to knock out an angel, even one not quite at full power. Through the hole in Cas’s shirt and coat where the stun gun had hit him he could see an angry wound, the color of which could only be described as red-and-charred, and which looked to be nearly six inches in diameter. As Dean watched, a little tendril of bright blue grace escaped the ruined flesh and dissipated into the air. Dean clenched his teeth and reminded himself that it wouldn’t do anyone any damn good if he freaked out about that now.

On his other side, the blonde guy was tied up too, and still unconscious from the looks of it. One post down, however, the guy with the ears appeared to be alert. Whatever he was. In the dim light from the bulb, it almost looked like the little trickle of blood making its way down his temple was green.

“Hey,” Dean grunted. “You. With the ears.”

The guy swiveled his head slowly to look at Dean, an eyebrow rising.

“What are you? Who are you guys?” Dean asked.

“We are not from here,” he said. “My name is Spock. That man is called James Kirk.”

“Kirk. Like the dead girl,” Dean said. There was something else oddly familiar about the names, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Spock nodded. “There is no relation, as far as we are aware. Why did you accost us?”

“You were following us,” Dean said. He remembered the times he’d seen them throughout the day, including how the man—Kirk, apparently—had turned around, apparently at the sound of his name. “Figured you were connected to the murder. …Weren’t you?”

“We were not following you,” Spock said, with a slight air of exasperation. “We were looking for our…friends. Given what we overheard of your conversation in the restaurant, we gathered that you might be as well.”

“Your friends,” Dean repeated, and decided to ignore, for the moment, the fact that Kirk and Spock had apparently done a better job of eavesdropping on Dean than Dean had on them. “The demons?”

Spock’s face remained impassive. “They are not demons. They were merely…taken over, by something. We believe them to be possessed by malevolent entities of some kind.”

“Uh…yeah,” Dean said. “Demons.”

Spock looked perplexed. “Demons do not exist. I believe you are… ‘pulling my leg’?”

The very serious and careful way in which he said the phrase would have been funny if it hadn’t been immediately reminiscent of Cas, sending Dean’s worry up another notch. It was also a little baffling. _Not of this world_ , the guy had said he was. He wondered what it meant. Somewhere like Oz, maybe?

“Demons are real,” Dean said tiredly. He was hardly in the mood for the "demons are real" speech. He glanced at Cas again, worry still churning in his gut. “What did your friend do to Cas?”

Spock’s glance at Kirk at the word _friend_ was telling. Though his expression barely changed, Dean could tell that he was concerned about Kirk too. 

“I believe your friend was shot by a phaser set to kill,” Spock said. 

Dean blinked. “Uh. A what set to _what_?”

“A phaser,” Spock said, as if Dean hadn’t heard him the first time, “set to kill. Such a blast would have disintegrated most forms of matter. It is fascinating, really, that he is alive at all.”

Dean was just about to unleash some of his worried frustration at Spock’s literalness and twisted idea of what was fascinating when Cas moved suddenly beside him. The first thing he did was twitch his head slightly, then groan, then squeeze his eyes shut and take several quick breaths.

“Cas?” Dean said, twisting around as best he could in the bonds to see him.

Cas’s eyes opened slowly, his jaw clenching, then he lifted his head and turned toward Dean. His voice was gravelly. “Dean.”

“You’re hurt. How bad is it?” Dean asked, wishing more than anything that he could get up and go over and check on him.

Cas didn’t answer for several seconds. “I don’t think the damage is fatal,” he said haltingly after a moment, then took a shaky breath. “Are you hurt?” For the first time, he seemed to be looking around and examining their surroundings. “Are we…?”

“Basement of the farmhouse, near as I can tell,” Dean said worriedly, “and I’m fine. You don’t _think_ it’s fatal?”

Cas was gritting his teeth and looking absolutely miserable. “Dean—we have more pressing issues. Don’t worry about me.”

“The energy should have disintegrated you,” Spock introduced himself. “It is a very powerful weapon. You must be powerful as well.”

“I’m an angel,” Cas said, still through gritted teeth.

“An angel.” Spock’s eyebrow rose. His hands twitched in his bonds, and Dean remembered how he’d tried to do something to Cas’s shoulder before Cas had twisted his hand hard enough to make the bone pop. “Indeed.”

Cas shot him a vaguely annoyed look, as if offended that his status as an angel was being called into question, but it quickly turned into another grimace.

“Near as I can tell,” Dean said to Cas, “they’re on our side. The not-demon side, anyway. The dudes in the yellow are friends of theirs who got possessed. Other guy’s name is Kirk but Spock here says there’s no relation.”

As he filled Cas in on what other little information he’d gleaned from his conversation with Spock, Spock’s eyes drifted closed and he appeared to be concentrating.

“Uh… Spock?” Dean asked after a few moments, the strange name catching on his tongue. _From another world_ … Now that he was looking closer, the blood really did seem to be green.

Several long seconds later, Spock’s eyes snapped open, and so did Kirk’s. Kirk looked around wildly, tugging at the bonds. “Spock?” he asked as soon as he’d seen his companion. “Spock, where are we?”

“We appear to be in a cellar,” Spock answered dutifully. “Captain, are you all right? I was beginning to grow concerned. I touched your mind, just now.”

Kirk gave him half a weary grin. “I’m fine, Spock.”

Dean was staring with his mouth half-open. As soon as Spock had called Kirk _Captain_ , something had jogged in his memory and he’d realized why their names sounded so damn familiar.

“Captain Kirk,” he tried out. “Captain Kirk of the starship… _Enterprise_?”

Kirk turned a steely eyed glare on Dean. “Spock, did you tell him about us?” he asked, without responding to Dean’s question.

“No, sir,” Spock said. “Merely that I am not from this place, which I assumed was already obvious.”

Kirk’s lips pressed together. “How do you know who I am?” he asked Dean.

“There’s, uh, books about you,” Dean said, feeling a little like he was in a really weird dream he needed to wake up from, STAT. “Nerd books. My kid brother liked them. About a space ship that goes around…discovering stuff, or something. And when he says he’s not from this world… he’s really not from this world.” He stopped suddenly, the realization hitting him like a Mack truck. After his own not-quite-encounter of the fourth kind, he’d pretty much figured there was no such thing. But this guy sure as hell was no fairy.

“I don’t believe this,” Kirk said, glancing at Spock. “Who are these people?”

Dean snorted. “Look, man, it’s weird. There’s books about me too. There’s friggin’ _fan_ fiction.” He shook his head slightly as more of the pieces fell into place. “You’re why we saw time travel readings on Sam’s contraption. Somehow you came back in time and you brought demons with you. Or they found you. Or something. And there’s books about you because…”

He trailed off, confused. There had only been books about him and Sam because they were the vessels for the Apocalypse. It was hard to imagine what use God and the angels might have for a dorky space series. If there was really life on other planets…were there other apocalypses too? Other gods?

Dean looked to Cas for help, but Cas was too busy gritting his way through another wave of pain to add anything. Worry jumped in Dean’s gut again and he wished he could get free just so he could pull Cas away from the pillar and take care of him. It was kind of a stupid impulse.

“I did not tell him any of that, Captain,” Spock said.

Kirk’s gaze remained flinty. “You certainly know a lot about us,” he said suspiciously. “Tell us who you really are.”

“My name’s Dean,” Dean offered, realizing he’d yet to actually introduce himself. “Cas here _is_ an angel. We hunt demons, among other things. Trail led us to your friends. Thought you might be connected with them when you showed up at the house.”

“To coin a phrase,” Kirk said, with a glance at Spock, “this is fascinating.”

“Yeah. Real fascinating,” Dean said. He glanced at Cas again, his stomach lurching as he realized that Cas’s entire frame was tense with the effort of not giving in to the pain. He felt an errant surge of anger at these strangers from the future, who had showed up and screwed their hunt to hell and hurt Cas so badly. It didn’t matter that from their perspective that he and Cas had attacked them first, or that in their position he might’ve done just the same. Cas was clearly in agony.

“We need to get out of here,” Cas said, every word sounding like an effort. “Those demons…they’ll undoubtedly be back. And I doubt that whatever they have planned for us will be pleasant.”

“Indeed,” Spock said.

Kirk looked thoughtful. Like Dean, he had tested his bonds, but the ropes appeared tight and immovable. “If you’re really an angel,” he said to Cas, “can’t you do a miracle? Get us out?”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, sounding ashamed.

“We don’t need any damn miracles,” Dean said grumpily. He’d been working at the ropes and getting nowhere. “Spock, don’t you have, like, super strength or something?” The details of the books (which, admittedly, he’d read out loud to Sam a few times when Sam had been really young) were beginning to come back to him.

It was Spock’s turn to look shameful. “My arm is injured,” he said, making Kirk’s head snap around to check him out. “I do not believe I can achieve the necessary leverage.”

They all sat in discouraged silence for a few moments. Dean was just about to open his mouth and comment on how they’d never have gotten into this position if they hadn’t all tried to fight each other in the driveway, and how that was kind of funny (kind of), when a loud creak coming from somewhere above them made them all look up.

Then there was a loud thump-thump-thump as a body rolled down the stairs. In the near-dark away from the bulb, Dean couldn’t tell whose it was, though it looked lanky and narrow enough he guessed it was a dude.

“What in the—” Kirk began.

But whatever he might have said was interrupted by the footsteps of two people making their way down the basement stairs. It was the demons, of course, and they stepped carefully over the body they’d just thrown down the stairs.

Dean had a horrified moment where he thought—maybe it’s Sam—but he forced his nerves to calm, and a squinting examination into the dimness let him sag in relief. The face was that of a familiar-looking stranger, and it took Dean a moment to place it. The farmer who had been away on business, Jessica Kirk’s brother, was now lying dead at all of their feet.

It wasn’t comforting, exactly, but at least it wasn’t Sam.

The demons were smiling again, the expressions eerie in the dim light.

“Hello, again, Keptin,” the Beatles reject said.

Dean remembered distantly a character who’d spoken in such an accent, the word written out _Keptin_ in the books. And the other…

“Sulu and Chekov!” he recalled, a little proud of himself. Both demons fixed their black eyes on him.

The demons exchanged glances.

“Told them about us, _Captain_?” the Sulu-demon asked.

Kirk shook his head slightly, a concerned gaze traveling back and forth between the demons’ faces.

“Vell. It doesn’t matter,” the Chekov-demon said, “because none of you are getting out of here alive. The Kirks end here,” he added, with a meaningful look at the body on the floor. “And your friends? Well, ve are entitled to a little fun, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” the Sulu-demon said with relish, producing an angel blade and twirling it. “I think we are.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sam had been getting nowhere fast. The hours ticked by slowly, as he’d gone through record after record about the Kirks and everyone they knew. As far as he could tell, there was nothing remarkable about them. Whatsoever. No shady history of association with demons or other supernatural forces, no shady history of any kind, really. He rolled his neck, shifting in the tiny library chair. Forget getting nowhere fast—he was getting nowhere.

He stood, pulled on his jacket, and stuffed his laptop back into his bag. He needed a new angle. Maybe, examining the body would get him somewhere.

Flashing his FBI badge got him into the small morgue (there wasn’t exactly a lot of security in Riverside, population of 1,000). The room was dark and he hummed softly to himself as he flashed his flashlight around the room, looking for the light switch, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the beam of light flickered across a figure standing over a body on a table.

He pulled his gun and trained the flashlight on the man, who looked just as startled to see him. The man was slight but round-faced, and he was holding some sort of little cylinder thing over the body. He was, Sam noticed quickly, wearing a blue shirt much like the yellow ones the killers had worn into the liquor store. And he was leaning over the late Jessica Kirk.

“What are you doing here?” Sam asked.

“I could ask you the same thing!” the man huffed.

“FBI,” Sam lied, transferring his flashlight to the crook of his arm to flash his fake badge.

“I don’t care if you’re the president of the Federation himself,” the man said. “Put that weapon down.”

“Um. No,” Sam said, taken aback by the man’s gruff tone. “Not until you tell me who you are. And what you’re doing here after hours in the dark.”

The man grumbled exasperatedly, “I’m a doctor. Name’s McCoy. I’m examining this body. And I was trying _not_ to get noticed. Now, are you going to shoot me, or can I do my job?”

Sam’s brow furrowed, but he let the gun drop. “Why are you examining _that_ body?” he asked.  

McCoy didn’t look particularly pleased that Sam was no longer pointing a gun at him. In fact, he seemed more annoyed, if anything. “I’m examining this body because two of my most trusted crewmen and friends recently lost their minds and killed her. We’re trying not to leave any stones unturned.” He resolutely turned back to the body.

“Crewmen?” Sam said.

“Don’t worry about it,” McCoy grumbled.

“What crew?” Sam asked. He recalled the Star Trek books he’d liked as a kid, and how there had been a Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy. He glanced again at the dead Kirk girl, and raised his gun again. “McCoy,” he snorted. “That’s cute.”

McCoy’s (if that was his real name) exasperation only went up a notch. “Cute?”

“That girl’s name is Kirk and you’re a doctor named McCoy,” Sam said. “You’re even wearing the costume. What is this? Some kind of sick stunt? Star Trek convention gone wrong?”

“What in the blazes are you going on about?” McCoy said.

Then the communicator on his belt chirped. Then chirped again, insistently.

Sam stared at it, for it had indeed made the chirping noise that the books had described. He’d assumed it was a prop once he’d recognized the costume. But props didn’t usually take calls.

“…You gonna get that?” Sam asked, feeling a little like the rug was being very slowly pulled out from under him.

“You gonna shoot me?” McCoy returned. But he picked up the communicator and flipped it open, speaking right into it. “McCoy here.”

The voice that came out of it filled the dark room with a Scottish burr. “ _Scott here, McCoy. How’s it going down there?_ ”

McCoy’s eyes flicked to Sam. “Fine. I think,” he said.

“ _Aye_ ,” Scott said. “ _The captain and Mr. Spock have missed their check in. They’re not with you?”_

“No,” McCoy said, his features folding in concern.

“ _Well, if you’re just about done there, I’d like to beam you up. Don’t like the idea of you being down there on your own, if something did happen to them_.”

“Amen to that,” McCoy said, glancing at Sam again.

Sam, for his part, had been listening to the exchange with his mouth hanging open.

As a buzzing filled the room and McCoy began to dissolve into a pillar of golden sparkles (just like in the books!), though, Sam sprang into motion: he leapt forward and wrapped his arms around the disappearing doctor.

The world dissolved around him.

-

“What did you mean, the Kirks end here?” Kirk asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. Though the demons admittedly hadn’t gotten around to being the worst dicks they could be—aside from a few errant punches their idea of _fun_ mostly seemed to consist of taunting Kirk for his apparently poor captaining skills, as well as examining Cas as if they’d never seen an angel up close—Dean had rarely found that getting their attention by asking dumb questions went well. It seemed plenty obvious to _him_ what “the Kirks end here” meant: the dead guy on the floor was a Kirk, and so was Captain Kirk, who was about to become a dead guy on the floor. On the other hand, the more attention the demons paid to Kirk, the less they’d pay to Dean and Cas. He’d been working at the ropes on his wrists, and while mostly he’d just succeeded in rubbing his wrists raw, he thought he was starting to feel some give.

“You mean you don’t know?” the Chekov-demon asked, snorting derisively. “You know, they all _say_ Spock’s really the brains of the operation.” He strokes Spock’s cheek menacingly, making Spock recoil with a look of confused disgust.

“Leave him alone,” Kirk barked, lurching in his bonds as if he could somehow get between them. Spock caught his eyes and shook his head slightly.

“Your line ends, here,” the Chekov-demon says, ignoring the exchange. “In the past. Then, you’re never born, and Hell prevails. Ve meant to kill your parents, of course. But your ship did not slingshot around the sun properly and ve arrived too early.”

Whatever that meant. Mostly, it was just disheartening to think that after two hundred plus years, Hell was still doing its thing. He glanced at Cas, who was still trying to curl around himself with a pinched expression, and supposed that in the grand scheme of things two hundred years didn’t amount to much. Cas had watched Hell do its thing for, what, 4 billion years? But closely examining the angel again dispelled his more philosophical thoughts because damned if he'd ever seen Cas in that much pain. They had to get out of here.

“My line?” Kirk echoed. “You must be confused.”

“You are from Riverside Iowa, aren’t you?” the Sulu-demon asked, coming forward.

Kirk nodded, his features shifting toward amusement. “I am, yes. But my parents didn’t move here until the 2190s. These people you’ve killed—“ he paused briefly to glance soberly at the dead man on the floor—“are no relations of mine.”

Both demons’ jaws dropped. Their mutual surprise was enough to make Dean snort and interject (against his best judgment), “Ever heard of ancrestry.com? Idiots.”

Two enraged demonic faces turned toward him.

“My family was from Kansas,” Kirk added, his tone heavy with disbelief. “You killed those people for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” the Chekov demon said, then waited a dramatic beat. “It was _fun_.”

“Just like torturing you will be,” the Sulu demon added, grinning at each of them in turn.

Dean rolled his eyes. Kirk gave the demon yet another steely glare. Spock, on the other hand, remained impassive—Dean vaguely recalled something about his species not having emotions, but he wasn’t sure. Cas, though… Cas was clearly fading fast. Though his eyes were open, they had the glazed-over look of someone who’s in too much pain to even expend the energy to be miserable. And he’d hardly lifted his head for any of the proceedings, not even when Kirk had said _Kansas,_ which Dean was desperately trying to convince himself didn't mean anything. Dean redoubled his efforts to pull free from the ropes.

He’d expected the demons to start with Kirk, who was on the end, and work their way around, but to his surprise both demons crowded around Spock first.

“What are you doing?” Kirk asked, his tone clipped.

“Having some fun,” the Sulu-demon said.

“Ve know you’re a hero-type,” the Chekov-demon explained. “And that you’re, vell, in love vith Mr. Spock. So, ve’re going to torture him, and you’ll watch. More fun for everyone.”

“I’m not in…” Kirk began.

Spock was looking down, as if the packed dirt floor had suddenly grown very interesting.

Both demons smirked at his embarrassment, making Kirk clench his teeth and explain.

“Spock is my friend. He’s like a brother to me,” Kirk added, his voice growing venomous. “And if you hurt him, I will send you back to wherever you came from. I swear it.”

“Hell,” the Sulu-demon said with a smile, as he drew an angel blade and ran it softly down Spock’s cheek. Spock sat unmoving, not even flinching as the Sulu-demon pressed it hard enough to draw a thin line of green blood. "Hell is where we come from."

“Don’t do this,” Kirk warned.

The demons did.

They started by taking turns cutting into Spock, leaving long streaks of green across his chest, face, arms and thighs, Spock remained impressively expressionless. Kirk stared at his friend, his face set, as if he could somehow afford him strength that way. There was an apology in his eyes too, which Spock blinked away. Dean found himself transfixed by how much seemed to have passed between them in a wordless moment. He wondered, vaguely, if a stranger watching him and Sam would see that much in a look. Or… someone looking at him and Cas.

As the demons worked, though, Dean found he couldn’t spare too much sympathy for Spock, even as the demons began to dig their blades in deeper and Spock’s jaw clenched as he fought for control. Even as they began to cut and pull away strips of skin from his collarbone to his stomach, making him stare straight ahead, a look of the most intense concentration Dean had ever seen settling onto his face and staying there. Even as the Sulu-demon took his blade and drove it deep into Spock’s bony shoulder, twisting it around and eliciting the first noise Dean had heard him make—a deep, stifled grunt that made Kirk sit up ramrod straight in his chair, sympathy and worry and anger all pulling at his expression.

It wasn’t that Dean didn’t care that a guy was being tortured in front of him, or that the guy's best friend looked like he was being torn apart by the sight. 

It was that Cas’s head had begun to hang down, as if it were too heavy to hold up, and he seemed too far gone to even watch the horrific spectacle unfolding before him.

“Cas,” Dean hissed, hoping to at least get the angel to look at him while the demons were distracted.

Cas didn’t move.

“Cas,” he tried again, a little louder. The Sulu-demon glanced at him then turned back to Spock, whose eyes had clamped tightly shut as the demon kept twisting the blade, and digging it in further and further.

This time, Cas raised his head sluggishly, his eyes dull. He blinked at Dean a few times, as if surprised to see him. Then, as if the modicum of awareness had brought with it terrific pain, his face crumpled into another grimace and he tensed, his head flattening back against the beam he was tied to. Dean felt as if the bottom of his stomach had dropped out. Whatever was wrong with Cas…it was bad. It was really bad.

The alien made another strangled noise of pain and Dean fought down a welling frustration. He had to get out of here. He had to get them _all_ out of here.

So, more determined than ever, Dean kept working on his ropes, grinding them against the rough wood of the beam. With the demons’ attention on the alien, it was easier to make bigger movements without being noticed, and as the minutes dragged on he worked and worked and worked. Though the blood began to run liberally down his wrists, getting his hands all sticky, he thought he was starting to wear through one of them, at least. He kept going.

A final tug, and he was free.

He sprung up from the chair and had pulled his extra knife from his boot, then cut Cas’s ropes before the demons even turned around. He pulled Cas up and said quickly, “You got any juice left, man, now’s the time!” in hopes that maybe Cas could still fly or blast or otherwise angel-power them out of there. Because there was no way they were running past two demons to the stairs.

Cas blinked and seemed to concentrate, and for a few long seconds Dean had hope.

Then the demons raised their hands and he and Cas were flying across the basement only to slam into the far wall. Dean’s head and back collided with the rough stone and he fell to the ground on his hands and knees, gasping. Cas hit injured side-first, and screamed—actually screamed—then fell to the ground trying to curl around himself, moaning. Dean tried to kneel beside him and help but the Chekov-demon was already bearing up on them. A raised hand had them pinned against the wall again, and this time, the demon was furious. Cas was still clutching at his wounded side, which was leaking grace even faster now.

Dean reached out a hand, which he could sort of move sideways, and grabbed Cas’s hand with it.

Across the room, the Sulu-demon gave Spock a hard kick in the ribs (Dean could hear the snap of bone from the far wall), then stalked toward them as well.

Dean had time for one errant thought— _Well, that didn’t go well_ —before both demons were upon them. The Chekov-demon was standing in front of Cas, his angel blade in one hand. Then he drove it deep into Cas’s gut, pinning him to the wall.

Cas cried out again, his hand slipping out of Dean’s as he tried to curl around himself.

Dean was mid-“You bastards!” when the Sulu-demon appeared right in front of him with a blade glinting in his hand. Suddenly there was a piercing pain in his own side and it was very hard to concentrate on anything else.

He was dimly aware of Cas going limp against the wall beside him, and Kirk yelled something, but the pain was white hot and spreading and taking his awareness with it.

That hadn’t gone well at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The dark morgue disappeared, and a new world materialized all around Sam. There were bright lights, and bright colors, and lots of things bleeping and blooping around him. Some of the bright colors, he found after he’d blinked a few times, were the uniforms—uniforms?—of several men pointing phasers at him.

He let go of Doctor McCoy and put his hands up, hardly daring to breathe. He’d seen a lot of weird in his time, but this? This was taking the cake. McCoy glared at him and took several steps away.

“Don’t move,” said the man in the front, in the same Scottish burr Sam had heard over the communicator.

Sam couldn’t’ve if he’d wanted to. He realized his mouth was open. “This is the _Enterprise_ ,” he said.

“Aye,” Scotty said, then looked to McCoy. “And who is he?”

“He was looking at the body too. Jumped on me as soon as I started to beam out,” McCoy said.

“My name is Sam Winchester,” Sam said, too busy staring around at the transporter room to remember that he was supposed to be FBI.

He didn’t get quite the reaction he expected. Scotty and McCoy looked at each other, then McCoy guffawed. “He was sayin’ _we’re_ all out of some book,” McCoy told Scotty. “I guess now he’s going to tell us he’s from the Winchester Gospel.”

“The…what?” Sam said. It hardly seemed possible the  _Supernatural_ books could have survived three hundred years into the future, let alone that he’d meet someone who’d read them. And called them the Winchester Gospel.

“I’m from Georgia. We still go to Sunday school there,” McCoy said. “So don’t play coy with me. The height? The hair? The plaid? Pretending to be…FBA, or whatever the blazes it was called? Either you’re as much in costume as you think I am, or….” He shook his head, and blinked a few times. “Can’t be.”

“All I know,” Scotty said dangerously, “is that he’s interferin’ in our business.” He raised his phaser again.

Sam jumped back.

“Hey! Whoa. Look. I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said in his most pacifying tone. “You’re from the future, right? We picked up time travel readings but we couldn’t figure out what was causing them. How did you do it?” When no one seemed particularly inclined to answer him, and Scotty narrowed his eyes, he went on quickly, “All this stuff that’s going on, we think there are demons involved. Some of your people might be possessed, and they’re killing off…Kirks. If your captain isn’t answering, he might be in trouble. I can help.”

McCoy and Scotty traded glances again.

“We don’t have time for this,” Scotty said after a beat, then motioned to the security team. “Take this… _Winchester_ and put him in the brig. We’ll deal with him later.”

Two men stepped forward and grabbed Sam’s arms.

“Wait! No!” Sam yelled, with enough feeling that even the security men looked unsure of what to do. “Please,” Sam went on. “If your people are in trouble chasing these guys, mine might be too. My brother is down there.”

“Scott,” McCoy said. He’d been staring at Sam with an expression of deep contemplation ever since he’d made the connection to the Supernatural books. “Wait.”

Scotty looked vaguely annoyed. “What is it, Doctor?”

McCoy let out a deep breath. “I’m worried about Jim and Spock too. We all are. But if this is really Sam Winchester…he’s right. We're going to need him.”

Sam arranged his face into what he hoped was a pleasant, helpful expression. It hadn’t really occurred to him until just then that if something bad was going down, Dean and Cas might be in it. But the farmhouse was the only point they knew of that the demons might return to, and if something had gone down the chances seemed good that it’d have happened there.

“Very well,” Scott said slowly. “Tell us what you know, son.”

-

Trying to escape from the demons had seemed like an awesome idea…at the time. Now, though, back in his chair with his arms tied behind him, bleeding from the side, watching Cas nearly crumple in pain beside him…Dean wasn’t so sure.

The demons had left them and reconvened on the other side of the basement, apparently discussing something. Kirk kept looking between Spock and Cas and Dean, clearly worried but unsure of how to help. Unsurprisingly most of his attention seemed to be on Spock, who, despite his impressive pain tolerance, had lost a lot of blood and was starting to list to the side slightly. Dean could see that Kirk, too, had been working on breaking through his ropes, but the beam behind him had been smoother and he hadn’t got far.

As soon as the demons returned, Kirk sat up straighter and said, “Chekov. Sulu. Whoever you really are. I don’t understand it, but whatever this is about, you said you wanted me. To end my line. Now, you've got me. Let the others go. Please.”

The demons considered for a moment.

“No,” Chekov decided.

“They’d just bring you back,” Sulu added. “As long as you ever still existed. No, this isn’t about you anymore.”

“Why?” Kirk pleaded.

“Vell,” Chekov said, “Your friends have made us wery angry. They have tried to escape. Also, hurting Spock is fun. He vas rude to me on the ship."

Kirk glaned at Spock, who raised his eyebrows in a facial shrug.

“Why is your goal to stop the captain from being born?” Spock asked, managing to sound like he was merely curious, and not questioning the captors who had tied him up and stuck blades into just about every place they could. “It is not logical. If you had a quarrel with him, surely it could have been resolved in our own time.”

“It’s not a quarrel,” Chekov said. “It’s merely a job. To better our own side’s chances.” Eyes flashing black, he stalked over to him and hit Spock across the face. A quick grimace flashed over Spock's angular features before the emotionless mask returned. “And shut up."

Dean, however, was staring at Kirk, for it the demons’ true purpose come to him in an flash of insight. _Something special about his line …he’d be just brought back…the demons’ side would win_. “He's a vessel,” Dean realized.

Both demons looked surprised.

"How did you know?" the Sulu-demon asked. 

“I'm a what?” Kirk said.

“Kansas," Dean said, not quite answering either of them. The pieces were falling alarmingly into place. "Your said ancestors are from Kansas. You must be—” he stopped short, aware that now (particularly in front of the demons) wasn’t the best time to share his revelation. But if it were true… was it his great-great-great-grandson who was tied to a chair and glaring furiously at the demons, or was it Sam’s? “Holy shit.”

Sulu punched Dean in the face too, knocking his head back against the beam. "Quiet, hunter.”

Dean bit down on a groan as his already aching head gave a minor explosion of pain.

Cas lifted his head just enough to give Dean a worried glance. Cas's face was drawn and pale and made Dean forget in a second about his own discomfort. Cas didn’t just look like crap. He looked like someone who was trying, desperately, to fight a battle against his own failing body...and losing.

Dean thought of the feel of Cas’s hand in his and wished with a sudden, irrational desperation that he could just reach out to him again. As if that could help, somehow. Or maybe it would just make him feel better.

“Now,” Chekov said in a stately manner. “Vhat ve vere trying to tell you before: ve have decided. Because ve now wery much dislike all of you, ve are going to play a little game.”

“That is also illogical,” Spock said calmly.

Chekov grabbed his shoulder and dug a thumb into the stab wound there. Spock’s lips tightened into a thin line and his eyes slipped closed for a moment but he didn’t make a sound. Kirk tensed again visibly.

“It vill be a fun game. For us. Not for you,” Chekov said. “Now, there are two pairs of you—two who clearly care wery much about each other.” He gave a suggestive little wag of the eyebrows. “Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock—the crewmen are always talking about you two. And Dean Winchester and Castiel—vell, let’s just say the other demons in around here are conwinced that you two have been, vell, intimate for a time now.”

Awkwardly, Dean avoided looking at Cas, and wished that he hadn’t just had that thought about hand-holding. Kirk and Spock, on the other hand, had just met each other’s eyes, and given nearly identical tiny eye rolls.

“So,” Chekov said. “The game is this. Captain Kirk, Dean Winchester, you vill try to make your lover" he gave another suggestive eyebrow waggle, "scream. If you make him scream first, he lives. If you don’t, he dies. If you refuse to play, ve’ll kill him right now.” He smiled smugly. “Any questions?”

Dean glanced at Cas, and then at Kirk, his heart racing. He couldn’t hurt Cas. But he had no doubt that the demons would follow through on their word if he refused to play. And if Kirk played but Dean didn’t, Cas would die anyway. 

“We think it’ll be an even match,” Sulu added with a oily smile. “Both are non-humans, who have shown an impressive resistance to pain, but who are already injured.”

“Bastards,” Kirk snapped, at the exact same time Dean muttered, “you sons of a bitches.”

Then Dean and Kirk looked at each other, and Dean thought he could feel an understanding passing between them. He did love Cas (totally not in the way the demons thought, of course), and Kirk loved Spock (jury was out on how, exactly). And neither of them could say no to the chance to save them. No matter how horrible it was.

“Captain,” Spock said, “do not play this ‘game’. My life is worth no more than his.”

Kirk’s didn't reply.

“Dean,” Cas managed, though his voice was already thick with pain. “Let me die.”

Dean shook his head. “Never.”

“Please, Captain,” Spock said.

“Please, Dean.”

Suddenly, Dean’s wrists were free, and he found himself standing with an angel blade shoved into his hand. He considered lunging at the demons but they were already at a distance, and with his side still searing where they'd stabbed him, he knew his chances of actually winning any fight against two of them were slim. And if he failed in that, he had no question that Cas would suffer the punishment. (He was trying not to think about what would happen to Cas ultimately, even if he did win.)

He gripped the blade and wished, desperately, for some other way out. He wanted to run. He wanted to shove the blade into his own chest. But there'd be no saving Cas if he did.

“Begin!” Chekov exclaimed.

There was no way out.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean said, and felt he’d never meant any words so much in his life.

Cas’s wide eyes met his, already forgiving him. It made him sick. “I understand, Dean,” Cas said.

Dean’s tour in hell had taught him about all there was to know about torture, and he could feel the knowledge returning from whatever locked box in his mind he usually shoved it into. Like muscle memory. And for a sickening moment, he felt pride in the knowledge that, given his expertise and Cas’s current pathetic state, he could win this.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” he said again.

Several feet away, Kirk and Spock’s conversation had been much simpler.

“Spock,” Kirk had said, his voice heavy with emotion.

Spock had met his eyes, resigned and unafraid. “Jim.” The unspoken words: Do what you must.

And so the game began.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean was pretty sure there were tears on his face. There weren’t any on Cas’s. He knew that because he kept waiting, with each gasp and grunt and muffled moan that came out of the angel, whether _this_ would be the point where Dean actually made him cry. It had been the worst hour of Dean’s life, and that included a whole lot of goddamn horrible ones. He wished their positions were switched. He wished it were anyone else (well, except maybe Sam). He wished the demons had just killed him when they’d caught him trying to escape, rather than sticking him to make a point.

But neither Cas nor Spock had broken yet, and that meant he had to keep going.

He’d started mostly on the wound on Cas’s side, which was still angry and red and burnt and seeping grace. He’d dug the blade into it, sliced it, gouged it, and scraped it, all of which made Cas close his eyes and bite his lip in what had to be agony. When that hadn’t worked Dean had given it a swift kick in hopes of startling Cas into screaming, but Cas only grunted, shudding with the effort of keeping it in.

“Scream, Cas,” Dean murmured. “Please. Scream.”

But Cas didn’t want to win. Cas wanted to save the other guy. The guy they’d just friggin’ met.

After a little while, Dean started to hate him for it. Of course, that came nowhere close to how much he hated himself. He had gotten out of a thousand worse situations. Two demons shouldn’t have him stuck like this like this. But for all he _knew_ that, he was powerless and out of options.

He started using every trick he had from Hell, or at least, all the ones he could do with limited means. He sliced and carved at Cas’s skin, he pinned Cas’s hand to his thick by skewering it then twisted it, he drove the blade in again and again, he broke Cas’s fingers then his hand then his wrist and bent it around pulling it back so that it lay flush against Cas’s arm. Cas gritted his teeth and gave a low moan and looked damnably miserable but he didn’t scream. Beside him, out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Kirk seemed afraid to inflict real pain and wasn’t using the best techniques anyway. Spock wasn’t in as rough shape as Cas had been anyway. Dean could win, he was sure of it. He could save Cas. He told himself over and over. But Cas just sat there and _took it_ and wouldn’t scream.

“Please, Cas,” Dean begged.

Jerkily, like he could barely focus on Dean enough to do it, Cas shook his head. “No.”

Dean pressed the mangled hand against the nearest beam and slammed the butt of the angel blade into it as hard and as fast as he could. Cas let out a pitiful noise but swallowed it immediately, a dry sob replacing it. His head bowed but when Dean kept his hand there and did it again, he just grunted and shook and grimaced and _didn’t scream_.

“Damn it, Cas!” he growled.

Cas raised his eyes. He looked empty. “No, Dean.”

The tears were coming faster now, but he couldn’t stop them. He raised the blade to hit Cas again but before he could do it, a strange buzzing filled his ears, and the world dissolved suddenly around him.

A different world reappeared. He was standing on a platform with Cas—who crumpled immediately—and Kirk and Spock, and the two demons, who looked as surprised as he was. Without thinking, he lunged across the platform and slammed his fist into the Chekov-demon’s face again and again, making him squeal. (It was ironic, some part of him realized, that it was that easy to make a demon yell when breaking Cas had been so impossible.)

Then someone was calling his name and pulling him back, and he dropped the blade in shock when he realized it was Sam.

“Dean,” Sam was saying. “Dean. Please. It’s not the demon anymore.”

Dean sat back and stared at the young man—whose nose was bleeding copiously now—and said, “What?”

A man in red, who Dean just noticed was aiming one of those stun guns at him, answered, “We read the demonic energy but it disappeared from their matter in the transporter. There’s nothing there but our men.”

“What in the blazes is going on here?” demanded a round-faced man in blue who had just entered the room.

Kirk had been kneeling over Spock, who he’d half-pulled into his lap. “McCoy,” he said to the round-faced man. “Get him and the other one to Sickbay. Now. I’ll explain there.”

In response to his words, a team of nurses (hot nurses, some distant part of Dean’s mind supplied, in little blue dresses) who had been following McCoy swarmed the platform. Dean crouched protectively over Cas, who had curled into the fetal position. He could hear McCoy explaining to Kirk who Sam was, and something about how he’d helped the ship find them and told them what demons were.

“Sam, what’s going on?” Dean asked, trying vaguely to fend off the nurses who were waving a little whirring thing around Cas’s head.

“He’s definitely not human,” a blonde nurse said in a no-nonsense voice. “I’m picking up a lot of energy. It’s…strangely disrupted, though.”

“He’s the angel,” Sam said, as if this was something they’d covered already.

“I hit him with my phaser,” Kirk said, standing up as Spock was moved to a stretcher.

“I see,” McCoy said wryly, helping the hot nurse move Cas to a stretcher (Sam managed to peel Dean away from him, just barely). “Jim, if I were you, I’d try to avoid shooting anymore _angels_.”

“Sorry,” Kirk said.

“So he’s Castiel?” McCoy asked Sam.

Sam nodded. “The one and only,” he said, though his brow was furrowed with worry now. “Can you, uh, fix angels?”

McCoy snorted, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “Based on these readings, I think so. He’s mostly…energy…and it looks like the phaser wound’s been eating away at it from the inside. I’ll sure as hell try. Castiel. _Phew_.”

Dean followed the stretcher and held onto Cas’s non-mangled hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Cas, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He could feel Sam’s hand on his own shoulder, but paid it no mind. Of course, he was barely paying any attention to the fact that he was in a _space ship_ , so he figured Sam would forgive him. “I’m sorry, Cas.”

Cas didn’t seem to be hearing him. He gripped Cas’s hand harder.

Kirk had gravitated to Spock’s side and seemed to be doing much the same thing.

Spock merely blinked up at him. “There is nothing to apologize for, Captain.”

“I don’t know about that, Spock.”

“Jim,” Spock said, his eyes closing with the effort of it. “You wished to save my life. And you did. There is nothing to apologize for.”

They all rolled into the Sickbay, which was full of more bleeping machines and nurses in miniskirts. Which would have been totally awesome, had Cas’s eyes not drifted shut, his pale face slackening.

“All right, Jim, now would be the time. How did this happen?” McCoy asked, helping the nurses move both Spock and Cas to beds. Kirk just shook his head slightly, intent on his injured officer. The monitor behind Spock’s bed started pumping out a fast heartbeat, while the monitor behind Cas’s…didn’t.

“What’s that…what’s that mean?” Dean asked. He realized that his own vision was starting to blur a little bit, and a nurse had apparently discovered the still-bleeding wound in his side because he too was being herded into a bed. “Is Cas okay?”

Then all the lights went out. There was a moment of pure confusion before auxiliary lights flickered on, illuminating the Sickbay with an eerie reddish glow.

“What the—” Kirk said.

Dean closed his eyes and remembered standing in the hold of a plane more than a decade before, and the feeling of utter pants-pissing horror that had come over him as the lights went off. Truth be told, he was beginning to feel something pretty similar right now. The Scottish guy had said that the demon energy had just disappeared when they’d all been beamed up. But what if it hadn’t gone far?

“Dean,” Sam said urgently.

“Yeah.”

“You think this is what I think this is?”

Dean swung his legs out of the bed he’d been pushed onto, gripping his side now that he remembered it hurt. “Demons in the ship?”

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“You know what this is?” Kirk said sharply, joining them. His hands were smeared with green blood and Dean realized that his hands were covered too. Several feet behind them, Dean could see the no-nonsense nurse trying to push Spock back into the bed.

“Demons in the ship,” Dean repeated curtly.

“They can possess vehicles. We saw one do a plane once,” Sam added.

Kirk blinked several times. “Those things. Are in _my_ ship?”

Dean and Sam nodded. “We think so,” Sam said.

Then the gravity cut out. It was gradual, at first. Dean felt himself floating up, weightless, for a few unreal moments. He heard McCoy mutter, “Blast it,” then, “strap them to the beds, Chapel,” and the nurses started maneuvering themselves toward Spock and Cas’s bedsides and tying them in.

“How do we get rid of them?” Kirk asked tightly. Somehow, he looked angrier than he had even when they’d been captured by the demons, even as he grabbed onto a nearby doorway to keep from floating off.

“There is a way,” Dean began, and then the gravity came back suddenly—but upside down, so it was as if the floor they’d been standing on was suddenly the ceiling above their heads. As he crashed toward the ceiling, Dean had time for one last thought. _Cas had better be tied down tight_.


	6. Chapter 6

Cas hadn’t been strapped onto the bed all the way, and he hit the ground hard just a few feet from Dean. Reeling from the shock and pain of the sudden fall, Dean checked quickly on Sam—who was pushing himself up beside him—then half-lurched, half-crawled to Cas and dropped to his knees beside him. The angel was groaning, conscious but clearly out of it. Dean cupped his face in his hand, then looked around for help.

Kirk appeared beside him, holding his shoulder but apparently otherwise fine after the fall. McCoy and the other nurses also seemed to be picking themselves up. Spock was suspended to the bed on the ceiling, looking down at them all with frustrated puzzlement. It might’ve been funny had the situation not seemed so dire.

“You said there’s a way to get rid of this thing,” Kirk said in a sharp tone. “What is it?”

“An exorcism,” Dean said as Sam joined them. Cas groaned again and it took all of his willpower to keep his mind on the task. “Something this big, we might need… you have a PA system on this thing?”

Kirk nodded tightly, then pointed to a small box near the door to Sickbay—which was now several feet out of reach.  “If we can get to that, we can force the demons out?”

“Probably,” Sam said. “Dean, get up on my shoulders. I bet you can reach.”

There was a loud buzz of electricity and sparks flew throughout the dark room, as if several things had shorted out at once.

“Or maybe not,” Dean muttered.

“Captain,” Spock called down from the ceiling. “I can sense these creatures. If the message needs to reach them, I believe I can…reach into their minds, and amplify it.”

“Do it,” Kirk said.

The floor beneath them was beginning to shake, and sparks flew again. A warning klaxon started blaring, then cut out as suddenly. Dean hugged Cas to his chest.

“Gentleman, if you will say the words…” Spock said, looking down at them.

Dean and Sam met each other’s eyes, then started the exorcism. As they chanted the shaking intensified, the floor bucking beneath them like it was alive. Smoke filled the room as sparks flew from all the equipment, shelves crashed down with a mighty noise, and Dean held Cas tight and kept chanting. Above them, Spock’s eyes were closed in concentration, his features tight with the effort.

And then, there was nothing.

The shaking stopped, the sparks stopped, and even the upside-down gravity eased, everything floating gently back into the air. Dean kept his grip on Cas, who was now looking up at him dazedly.

“It’s over,” Dean murmured.

Cas’s eyes closed again.

-

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for everything to get put back in order. The _Enterprise_ ’s crew was, as Sam explained it to him, supposed to be the best in the fleet, and it was currently living up to its reputation. The gravity had been repaired early, Sickbay was up and running, and—after Sam had given him a _seriously dude it’s a starship how can you not_ glare—Dean had acquiesced to leave Cas’s side long enough to take a short tour of the ship which showed that pretty much everything else was back in order too.

Both Cas and Spock were resting, the bed still pumping out Spock’s heartbeat and doing nothing for Cas, which had concerned Dean greatly before he’d remembered that angels probably didn’t have heartbeats. According to McCoy, they were both going to be fine. Thanks to the weird future medical technology, their physical wounds had apparently been the easiest to set right, and even Cas’s mangled hand was supposed to be good as new within the week. (McCoy had whirred something over Dean’s stab wound as well, then sprayed it with something, and wrapped a sort of shiny bandage around it. It felt about a thousand times better.) The energy drains caused by Cas’s phaser wound and Spock’s channeling of the exorcism, McCoy said, would take a little longer…like two weeks.

While Sam wandered around the ship looking at things, his little nerd brain about as excited as could possibly be, Dean had mostly settled in by Cas’s bedside to wait. He found that as the hours drew on, his most frequent companion turned out to be Kirk, who seemed to leave his bridge duties as often as possible to take a seat by Spock and watch _him_ sleep.

“Dean,” Kirk said, one of the times. “There was something you said back there, in the basement. That I’m a vessel. What did you mean by that?”

“It means if any dick blobs of light come wanting to share real estate, you say no,” Dean said. When Kirk’s curiosity deepened to utter confusion, Dean sighed and explained all he knew about vessels and bloodlines and archangels and the apocalypse.

“The ‘Star Trek’ books that Sam was talking about,” Kirk said. “Are they gospel, too? Like your Supernatural books? I’ve been trying to understand how books about us could have existed two hundred and fifty years in the past.”

“Must be,” Dean shrugged. It made a certain kind of sense.

“If there’s going to be another apocalypse,” Kirk went on, clearly struggling to process the information. “Michael or Lucifer may want to be…in…me. That’s…some news.”

“Tell me about it,” Dean shrugged.

Kirk looked thoughtful, then worried. “You said they possess people in a bloodline. I don’t have any family left, just a young nephew. A child. Are you saying the other archangel would try to take him?”

“Nah,” Dean said. “They can resurrect people, easy. They like doing brothers, far as we can tell.”

Kirk’s eyes widened. “I had a brother. Sam.”

For a few moments, Dean said nothing, the absurdity of it washing over him. Of course he had a friggin’ brother Sam. It only made sense. Then he started chuckling, and couldn’t stop, even as Kirk stared at him in utter confusion. Finally Dean took a deep breath. “Guess history really does repeat itself, huh?”

“I…guess,” Kirk said doubtfully, squinting at Dean a little suspiciously, as if he still couldn’t figure out what was funny. (Truth be told, Dean wasn’t so sure himself.) “You’re part of this bloodline too, aren’t you?” Kirk asked.

Dean’s mirth fled as quickly as it had come. “Yeah. I think so. Gotta be Sam’s great-great-great-whatevers, though. I mean, the chances that I’d…” he shrugged, thinking of Lisa and Ben and weirdly finding himself trying to avoid glancing at the sleeping Cas.

“We could check,” Kirk offered. “The _Enterprise_ has access to Earth records from your time. I’d be happy to show you.”

“No,” Dean said quickly. He was sure, with a conviction he didn’t entirely understand, that he didn’t want to know. “And don’t tell Sam either, okay?”

“If that’s what you want,” Kirk said.

They fell into silence, each watching their respective patient. Then Dean asked something that had been nagging at him for a while.

“So you and him,” Dean said, nodding at Spock. “Are you actually, uh, you know? Like Chekov said?”

“No,” Kirk said, a smirk creeping across his face. “The demon, and, ah, possibly Chekov, were…misinformed. Spock and I are friends. I expect we always will be. I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

“Oh,” Dean said, feeling oddly disappointed. It had seemed that he and Cas had so much in common with Kirk and Spock, and a small part of him— _small_ part—had thought that maybe if Kirk and Spock could make it work, he and Cas could too. He shook himself slightly to avail himself of the thought. It was stupid. He and Cas were…friends too. That was all. He realized he was holding Cas’s hand, still, but couldn’t quite make himself let go.

“I take it you and Cas have a somewhat different relationship?” Kirk asked lightly.

“What? No. Of course not,” Dean said quickly, worried he’d given away too much on his face. He shouldn’t even be thinking these things at all. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve ever, you know, done anything. And, he’s an angel. We’re friends.”

Kirk’s smile was gentle. “You don’t sound so sure.”

“I don’t?” Dean said, temporarily lost for words.

“I’ve never had any doubts about my relationship with Spock,” Kirk said warmly. “About what I’d like it to be. That’s why, I imagine, it’s as easy to describe to you as it is. He’s simply the best friend I’ve ever had. Can you say the same?”

Dean found his face was scrunching in mixed disbelief that Kirk would even _go_ there, and doubt because he really wasn’t sure what the answer was. He forced himself to smooth out his features. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Course I can.”

“Of course,” Kirk echoed diplomatically. The intercom on the wall had started whistling, and a woman’s voice called, _Bridge to Captain Kirk_. Kirk stood up and headed over to it. “Excuse me.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Dean mumbled.

As it turned out, Kirk was needed on the bridge, which left Dean alone in Sickbay with two unconscious guys and his thoughts. Absentmindedly, he found himself rubbing his thumb gently along the skin of Cas’s good hand, and wondering. Was it possible to have what Kirk had been talking about? Sure, he had some serious doubts that he’d ever really be happy just being friends with Cas, but was the alternative even an option? Cas was an angel, after all. Cas didn’t do any of that love or relationship stuff, as far as Dean knew (the reaper he’d banged as a human, Dean had long since decided, didn’t really count). And even if he did, there was no knowing that he’d want to do it with Dean. If Dean brought it up and Cas wasn’t into it, it could totally mess up what they did have. Which would be about the worst thing he could imagine. When it came down to a choice between Dean not being totally happy with just being friends, versus losing everything they did have, the answer seemed pretty obvious. Of course he shouldn’t tell Cas how he felt.

He took a deep, steadying breath, and tried to process the fact that he’d even just _considered_ telling Cas how he really felt. Hell, he was pretty sure he hadn’t even admitted to himself what he really felt until the possibility had been there.

 _And I can’t fight this feeling anymore_ …

The crappy song he’d been belting out on their way to Riverside drifted through his mind and he had to swallow back a stupid wave of emotion. He was going to fight it, because that was the only damn way he could have Cas in his life.

He didn’t let go of Cas’s hand, though.

They were still sitting like that a few minutes later when Cas opened his eyes and blinked at Dean a few times. Dean had been so lost in his own thoughts he almost hadn’t noticed, but as soon as he did he jolted into action.

“Cas? Hey! How do you feel? Are you okay? I’m sorry, man, I’m so…sorry.”

Cas cleared his throat, looking around at the instruments and the various futuristic medical devices attached to him. “Hi…Dean,” he said hoarsely. “I see…we survived?”

“Yeah, we did,” Dean said, finally letting go of Cas’s hand, which he was sure Cas wouldn’t want him holding anymore. “Exorcised those sonsabitches right out of the starship, which, by the way, is freaking huge.”

Cas nodded slightly. His face still had a pinched, painful look.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dean asked, then remembered that Cas had never actually answered that question. “They said the physical stuff will heal soon. The…everything I did to you. You just have to get your energy back, okay? And, and really, Cas…I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Dean,” Cas said, finding Dean’s hand again and giving it a slight squeeze. Dean felt his skin prickle at the touch but forced himself to ignore it. He’d never had this problem before…or had he? It was all very confusing.

“Yeah. I do,” Dean said. “I messed you up. Real bad. I wanted to hurt you, so I could save you, yeah, but I wanted to do it.”

“I understand,” Cas said, then gave a small, sad smile. “Dean, do you remember what we were talking about in the car outside the farmhouse, before Kirk and Spock arrived?”

Dean thought back. Cas had been about to say something, which had been interrupted. “You said you had PTSD, from the attack dog spell,” he recalled. “What, you’re trying to say we’re even now?”

“Not quite.” Cas sounded mildly wistful. “I said that I was having flashbacks, and feelings, from when I hurt _you_.”

Dean shrugged. Tomato, tomahto.

“Dean, what I had been about to say,” Cas plowed on, his eyes squinting slightly at Dean’s lack of reaction, “is that I’d come to understand why hurting you had affected me so much.”

“And?”

“And,” Cas sighed, as if it were exceptionally hard to get out the next few words. “And, Dean, I believe it’s because I love you.”

Cas stopped there, but Dean’s mouth was too busy hanging open to form a coherent answer. Or even a coherent thought. Cas couldn’t love him. It just couldn’t be. Because it meant… it meant…

“I hadn’t really understood the emotion at first,” Cas went on, when Dean didn’t say anything for several seconds. “I certainly knew that I felt something for you, but I assumed that it was the sort of familial love that you and Sam have for each other, or perhaps deep friendship, since I had also never experienced either of those for a human before.” He looked at Dean warily, as if unsure whether to go on, then added, “But I think this is different. And my point… my point is, you don’t have to apologize. I love you, and I will always forgive—”

He was cut off, because Dean had finally realized what do to with his mouth. He leaned down and kissed Cas right on the lips. As he did, their fingers entwined again, and it occurred to Dean why it had been so easy to forgive Cas too—why talking about what Cas had done hardly seemed worth the time.

He thought about what Kirk had said, how he’d been so sure of what he wanted his and Spock’s relationship to be, and how easy that had made it. As it turned out, Dean was pretty damn sure too.

They broke apart, Cas looking about as shocked as Dean had been at Cas’s proclamation.

Dean smiled, finding it somehow amazingly easy. “And I can’t fight this feeling anymore,” he half-murmured, half-sang.

“Dean?” Cas asked, confusing tinged with worry settling over his features again.

“I…I…I love you too,” Dean said, and once the words were out it was light a weight had lifted from his chest, a weight that had been there so long he hadn’t even noticed it. When Cas looked like he still hardly believed it himself, Dean leaned down and kissed him again.

And that was how, when he looked back on that week many years later, getting captured and exorcizing two demons from a friggin’ giant starship from the future with the help of its maybe-his-great-grandson-slash-coming-apocalypse-vessel-captain and his alien friend would still be only the second thing that came to mind.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear what you think!


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